Stella Partheniou Grasso: Hello, my name is Stella Parthenu Grasso. I grew up in Niagara Falls Ontario, but my name and I traveled across the ocean before finding our home in Canada. Stella is short for Stellyiani, which was my grandmother's name. My favorite thing about Stellyiani is that it has the letter Y in it. More names should use the letter Y. Parthenu is a Greek Cypriot last name. It originated with my father in the small village called Araki on the island of Cyprus. It means child of a guy named Partheni. He was given the last name Parthenu because he was the son of Partheni.

By the time I was born, people in the village started keeping the same last names as their parents, and there are now three generations of very talented Parthenus throughout Cyprus, Canada, and the United States. One of my favorite things about being a Parthenu is that my name includes all of the vowels of the alphabet and they're in order. A, E, I, O, U. The only one missing is Y. Grasso is the newest part of my name. It traveled across the ocean to find me. My husband's family is originally from Italy. After we got married, I added my husband's last name to my own to become Stella Parthenu Grasso.